Investigating Power
In the past, ALEC has paid for legislators to attend its conferences, the Investigative Center for Media and Democracy has reported. Legislators who serve as state chairmen for ALEC are expected to collaborate with corporations to raise “scholarship” funds to help pay for legislators to attend ALEC events.
ALEC has remained conspicuously silent about the dangerous and racist statements and ties of its legislative leaders and members Shea, King, Nearman, Stringer, and Keller.
The focus of Big Green environmental and conservation groups that emphasize biodiversity and protecting wildlife and natural habitats like oceans, rainforests, grasslands, and desert ecosystems is different, however. Who gets included as part of “Big Green” is not always consistent, but helpfully the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch identifies 10 lead organizations. These are: Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and World Wildlife Fund. (A more extensive list of the 25 largest environmental groups is available here.)
Extinction Rebellion’s protest against ALEC’s “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act” legislation comes as watchdog organizations Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause released a new report this week comprehensively detailing ALEC’s influence in Texas. The report identified 58 Texas legislators with known ties to ALEC — the largest of any state’s delegation, representing almost a third of the Texas Legislature. In fact, the authors of both the House and Senate versions of the recent critical infrastructure bill both attended ALEC conferences in recent years.
That’s press day here at the Chronicle, so I likely won’t make it down there, but I’m proud that this current Pride issue is the one that’ll be on the stands representing us there, because ALEC has a history of taking on gay rights as well. The Center for Media and Democracy recently documented how ALEC “is actively working with Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian Right litigation nonprofit that pursues an anti-LGBT agenda” and is identified as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. …
Charen neglected to mention that her think tank is funded by foundations created by big corporations, including big pharma, oil, Forbes and the Koch brothers, according to sourcewatch.org.
Laster works for the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank that’s an affiliate of the State Policy Network. According to a 2012 report from the Center for Media and Democracy, the State Policy Network is a main driver of legislation created by the pro-business American Legislative Exchange Counsel and has deep ties to Charles and David Koch, the energy billionaires who spend vast sums of money to promote conservative causes and candidates. The California Policy Center is dedicated to pushing education reform causes, with a focus on beating back the state’s teachers union. The group has been behind a number of lawsuits designed to hurt unions’ bottom lines.
ALEC describes itself as “America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” That’s about one-half the story. The other half, as the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, is that ALEC is a legislative bill-mill where “global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights.”
In the face of widespread outrage, Trump’s friends from the Summit have gone out of their way to justify his actions.
Please join the Center for American Progress for a discussion on how corporations and special interest groups promote state policies that make corporations and wealthy donors richer, at the public’s expense. It will also examine how lawmakers backed by these groups further corrupt democratic processes to maintain power and keep harmful policies in place.
Featured panelists:
Lisa Graves, President, Board of the Center for Media and Democracy; Co-Founder, Documented Investigations